The following is an excerpt.
President Barack Obama signed a six-month funding bill on March 27 to little fanfare, with the exception of one attention-grabbing provision listed as Section 735. This language is vital for American farmers and should be celebrated in the countryside. This new law will give growers the assurance that in addition to managing the everyday challenges of drought, weeds, pests and more, they can now worry a little bit less about activist groups trying to tell them what they can and can’t plant on their farms.
If that last scenario sounds a little farfetched, ask an alfalfa or sugar beet grower who adopted varieties of those crops improved by biotechnology, then watched as the investment was threatened by groups ideologically opposed to its use. Alfalfa, a nutritious livestock feed, is our fourth-most-valuable crop but susceptible to difficult weed management that has made Roundup Ready varieties of the crop so popular with growers. For Roundup Ready sugar beets, the demand was even more evident, as the adoption rate went from zero to 95 percent of all domestic acreage in just a few years.
Share this article
View the original article here: Let’s protect biotech crops from environmental zealots
